Texas Hot Links

When I think of BBQ, I picture ribs, brisket, pulled pork, maybe the oddball turkey breast. If you asked me "what defines Texas BBQ", I would probably have said beef ribs. But apparently there's a kind of smoked sausage there that I have been missing out on for my whole life, called a Texas Hot Link. It's a beef sausage, cured and smoked, a bit like a NY style "half smoke" but I think a bit more spicy and probably quite a bit more heavy on the smoke. Twice as smoked, if you go by just the name. I had the good fortune to try this recently while enjoying a combo plate we know as a "hog bucket" at our local BBQ restaurant, and was instantly a fan. So of course I had to try making this at home, because all rational people decide to make forcemeat dishes when they find ones that taste good, right?

Searching for a recipe pulled up more colorful names for this - hot links, hot guts, and also just "guts". Not the best name, hopefully that's not how you would have to order a sausage platter in, say, Austin, though that probably wouldn't be the strangest part of your day even if that's what it came to. But the general premise seemed easy enough - grind up fatty beef with spices and a curing salt, stuff, rest overnight, smoke, feast, food coma. Done. Sounds easy, right?

Well, not so much. This turned out to be an exercise in not having the right equipment at the right location. I was looking forward to using my sausage stuffer, but discovered that the tubes weren't in the box, and after tearing the house apart concluded that they were donated along with an old meat grinder. So getting the meat into the casings required two people wrangling equipment, shoving with full force down the throat of a KitchenAid meat grinder, which was woefully inadequate and kept getting gummed up. I also had no good way to hang the sausages in the smoker, and the makeshift rack caused the links to slip down and knock into each other, slowing things down and causing uneven smoke coverage. Finally, the probes to my thermometer weren't the thin kind that I could leave in one of the sausages, so I kept opening the smoker every hour or so to poke at them as I became increasingly starving, annoyed, and frankly, hostile towards the unsuspecting links. They didn't cause this.

In the end, the two day experiment put dinner on the table at a reasonable 10:30 at night. But all of the frustration melted away into greasy, spicy, smoky bliss after trying just one bite. I would say this was a huge success, and plan to make a much larger batch for a party, since this should scale pretty well in the right smoker. And the smells in the house even the day after carried happy memories of sausages past, which was a nice bonus to wake up to. I will say that for adults, the flavor is great, but for kids, I'd knock down the amount of cayenne, which was pretty intense.

Last time we bought these from the restaurant, any survivors from the initial dinner ended up in a sausage, kale, and potato soup, which we will make soon and post with stragglers from the current batch.

Here's the list of crazy tools I used (or should have) to make this work:

• Stand mixer
• Meat grinder
• 5- to 10-pound sausage stuffer
• Vertical smoker with offset smoke chamber
• Needle tip probe thermometer
• Very precise kitchen scale
• Spice grinder

The other thing I highly recommend is a pack of Instacure #1, also known as Prague Powder #1. This is the curing salt that is used in making hotdogs and other cured meats, and it's incredibly unsafe if handled wrong, possibly fatal if consumed plain, maybe toxic, and makes for totally delicious sausages. Follow the directions for its use exactly! 5 lbs of meat translates to just under 1 tsp of this curing salt. I happened to have some from back in my sausage-making days after taking a butchering class in college (land grand schools rock!), but if this product is new to you, don't be scared of it, but do be careful.

The recipe was lifted almost verbatim from the Thermoworks website minus the use of ground mace, which we were out of.

After 4 hours in a 200 F smoker

The finished product. I think the color is about right, but I'm no expert

5-pound vertical sausage stuffer. Not helpful when you LOSE THE STUFFER TUBES!!! Ugh.

The setup - heavy on the spices and equipment on this one

Be careful with the curing salt (the pink-colored salt at about 11 o'clock in this photo)!

Mixing the meat and spices with water will unravel the proteins and make a good paste for stuffing. Not the best for getting through the grinder chute, but good once it's in the casing. If only I had a sausage stuffer....

Thread the casings onto the stuffer tubes, tie a knot, and go wild. Oh, and good luck finding casings this century - had to go to many grocery stores before I found them. Check with a butcher if you have one nearby, or order online if you don't.

I twisted these as they came off the tube, but you could do one long rope and then twist. Spin in alternate directions or they will unravel. Keep pressure on the casings still on the tube to control the fill speed, and poke holes in the filled sausages with a toothpick to pop air bubbles, as needed.

Ready to be rested overnight in the fridge to cure

24 hours after stuffing, into a 200 F smoker for 2-4 hours

Towards the end of smoking. The color doesn't reflect the finished product in the first photo.

Texas Hot Links

Modified slightly from Thermoworks.com blog post

• 3 lb lean beef eye of round is perfect. Or use 80/20 ground beef.
• 1 lb beef fat not rendered, such as brisket trimmings. I used very fatty pork belly, since I don't have a good butcher at the moment
• 6 g paprika (NOT smoked!!)
• 8 g cayenne pepper (maybe less if you want a more family-friendly flavor)
• 5 g mustard powder (ground fresh in the spice grinder)
• 7 g garlic powder
• 5 g onion powder
• 25 g ground black pepper (ground fresh in the spice grinder, though I've read to maybe do some fine and some coarse)
• 90 g dry milk powder, used as a binder
• 40 g salt
• 5 g Prague powder #1 AKA Instacure #1 curing salt. My packet's instructions quote this as just under 1 teaspoon, which is what I use for a 5 pound batch of meat.
• 1 ½ cup cold water
• Hog casings

Cube and chill the beef and beef/pork fat, then chill them in the freezer for about 30 minutes, alongside your grinder. Grind with a medium disc into a bowl set into a larger bowl of ice.

Mix the seasonings, milk powder, and cure together in a small bowl. Put the meat into the bowl of a stand mixer, and sprinkle on the cure/seasoning mix. Make sure the meat is still below 40 °F.

Mix the meat with the paddle attachment, adding the water as you go, until it forms a sticky, fibrous mass that clings to the walls of the mixer and the paddle.

Stuff the meat into casings (not too tight or they will burst!) and twist it into links. Pop any bubbles in the casings with a toothpick as needed.

Allow the links to sit, uncovered, in the refrigerator overnight to cure and dry out just a little.

The next day, preheat your smoker to 200°F. Put the sausages in the smoker, insert a needle probe into one of them if you have one, and close the lid. Cook to 155 - 160 °F. It should take a few hours.

If saving the sausages for later, plunge them into an ice bath to chill and stop cooking. Otherwise, slice and eat fresh off the smoker.

Dry-fried sichuan long beans

Ever had the wrinkly, dry-cooked green beans from a Chinese restaurant and wondered how it's done? Here's how. This dish is readily available on the internet, but I'm reposting a version I like. It tastes nothing like what I've had at Americanized Chinese restaurants, but that's not a bad thing.

The trick to this dish is the dry-frying method, which isn't exactly "dry". It's frying for a very long time until dry, in a bit of oil. It requires very good temperature control, so hopefully you know your cooktop, whatever heat source it is. There are a number of workaround methods - Kenji Lopez recommends broiling instead of dry-frying, Woks of Life has one version talking about shallow-frying in 1/4 cup of oil, restaurants tend to just deep fry the things - but the traditional method is to fry with a minimal amount of oil and a healthy amount of patience, and I think the reward in consistency and flavor is worth the attention.

It took me many trips to different grocery stores to find the right preserved vegetable, so have a look at the picture and look for "ya cai" when you think you've found it. Otherwise you might end up with something too sweet. This has almost a peppery, pungent flavor unlike most other Chinese condiments I've cooked with. I'm not convinced that this $1.00 bag of product is the best version of itself, and may investigate either sourcing or making a fresher, less commercial version of this to see how it improves the dish.

This version uses purple Thai long beans from the garden, but you could use any string bean you have available, as long as it's fresh and not frozen.

All of the ingredients, including the ya cai. Look for this darker-hued product, not the brightly colored preserved stems. Both are in the refrigerated section

Sichuan Dry Fried Green (or Long) Beans

Lifted from https://redhousespice.com/dry-fried-green-beans/

• 12 oz long beans or green beans, trimmed to 2" lengths
• 2 tbsp neutral oil, divided in half
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 Chinese dried chiles
• 1 tsp sichuan peppercorns (but recommend far fewer if they're freshly picked, me)
• 1/4 lb ground pork
• 1 tsp Shaoxing wine
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp minced ginger
• 1.5 tbsp ya cai preserved mustard greens
• 1 tsp regular soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp dark soy sauce

Rinse the ya cai and squeeze out the moisture until the water runs clear - this has an overly pungent flavor to the preserving liquid that overpowers everything. Set aside.

Trim beans and massage with 1 tbsp oil and salt to evenly coat (this trick works great for fried rice as well!). In a large wok, cook beans over medium heat, tossing regularly, for 10-15 minutes, until wrinkled and thoroughly cooked. Remove to a plate.

Still on medium heat, add the remaining 1 tbsp of oil and toss in the sichuan peppercorns and chile peppers to lightly toast them. Before these burn, which is nearly instantly, add the pork and stir-fry quickly. As this finishes, add the Shaoxing wine to rehydrate, and allow it to cook off slightly. Then add the garlic, ginger, ya cai greens, and the soy sauces, and toss to combine.

Add the beans back in, quickly toss to combine, and plate!

Dry frying on an induction wok, a new toy I bought after one too many failed stir-fries on the stove. I eventually reduced the temp to 375 and had no regrets.

Here's what the prep area looks like after cooking the beans

The seasoning mix, which really just elevates the beans with a complex flavor. Probably a bit too much meat here, and the peppers got a little too charred in just a matter of seconds. Be careful with your temperatures

Paloma with Oleo Saccharum

I recently had my first Paloma cocktail, which was a revelation. Apparently I don't hate grapefruit after all, because this drink made me basically do away with drinking margaritas and switch to these instead. Think of it as a slightly more sweet, more complicated margarita, that's also pink. Palomas can be made with grapefruit soda, or they can be made with fresh grapefruit juice. And since I was trying to figure out why I needed to learn to make an oleo saccharum, once I started thinking through the drink I realized this was the right opportunity to learn.

Serve with a tomato-groundcherry salsa and some chips, and feel no shame in forgetting to make dinner afterwards

Oleo saccharum is a cool trick to extract essential oils from citrus peel, where you put the peels in with sugar and beat them up a bit until they soak into the sugar and create an infused syrup to use in cocktails. I've mostly seen lemon used in this way, and tried this once, but wasn't sure what to do with it other than make limoncello. The grapefruit version makes a really powerful grapefruit-flavor syrup that doesn't have too much extra bitterness, and it really amplifies the grapefruit flavor in the final drink. This can be made in a bowl and left overnight, but if you have a vacuum sealer and just need to have one of these as soon as possible, this can be made in a couple of hours.

The finished oleo saccharum after 2 hours under vacuum

I tried a bunch of variations on this cocktail - mixtures of tequila and mezcal, adding grapefruit bitters, charring the grapefruit on the grill first. In the end, some things helped with flavor, some with color, but a lot was overkill. I'm presenting the version I'm going to be making moving forward.

Completely pointless overkill. But the drink did come out a slightly darker color, with a bit more smoke flavor. I may revise if I oil the grapefruit first and get it over a higher flame.

I'm told by people in the know that the proper garnish on the rim of this drink is Tajin. I went with salt, but the swap certainly wouldn't hurt anything.

• 2 oz tequila, with up to 25% replaced with mezcal
• 1/2 oz fresh squeezed lime juice, from approximately 1/2 of one lime
• 2 oz fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, from approximately 1/2 of one grapefruit
• 2 oz club soda
• 1 tsp grapefruit oleo saccharum, recipe below. Substitute agave, simple syrup, or whatever liquid sweetener your body can cope with
• Coarse kosher salt, for rim of glass

Juice the citrus, saving the spent lime half. Rub this on the rim of your glass and allow to dry slightly, then dip rim in salt.

Into the glass, pour the tequila/mezcal, citrus juices, and oleo saccharum. Stir to combine. Add ice, top with the club soda, lightly stir again, and enjoy.

Oleo Saccharum

• Peels from 2-3 grapefruits
• Equivalent amount of superfine sugar, by weight, compared to the peels

Peel the grapefruit in large strips, being careful not to grab too much of the white pith layer. If you have superfine sugar, put the peels and the sugar into a bowl, or a vacuum sealer bag. If you have regular sugar, consider throwing into a blender for a few seconds, to make into finer sugar - this will help the liquids and oils more thoroughly dissolve the sugar, otherwise there's a crystallized layer of sugar that will form and be less useful. If placing in a bowl, bash up with a spoon or muddler for a while, then leave bowl overnight to extract the oils. If using a vacuum sealer, leave for 2-3 hours, or refrigerate for up to a week, no bashing necessary.

Chao Dan (Omelet with Chinese sausage and snow peas)

I had this dish at a random place in the middle of the Pennsylvania Dutch heartland, as one does when they head into Amish country. It's a riff on an open-faced omelet with influences from throughout Asia, that I have reconfigured in many ways. It's a great way to use up fresh spring greens from the garden - I've used sliced snow peas, fava bean leaves, garlic scapes, and spinach so far, and I'm sure many other possibilities would be fantastic. It has Chinese sausage (lap cheong) in all variations I've made, and is fairly similar to the more common sausage fried rice (chow fan) but with more egg and no rice.

I'm having a hard time pinning down where exactly this dish is from - Thailand, or China. It's also similar to the Vietnamese Bánh Xèo crepe that isn't an omelet at all, in terms of the filling. The name seemingly just translates as "scrambled eggs", the most common of which being the egg-tomato dish popular in China. This disappointing, because I feel like this variant deserves its own name.

Garnish however you like, but I've had it with fried shallot, sliced Thai basil, and a drizzle of a thinned oyster sauce over the top, which brings a lot of big flavors to the table. 

 

 

This recipe makes TWO omelets. Make the whole thing in series - no need to cook all of the filling at once and remove, because these are open-faced and cook quickly.

• 2 Chinese sausages (lap cheong), sliced diagonally 1/8" thick
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup snow peas or fava leaves, cut into strips
• 4-5 garlic scapes chopped, if you have them, or 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 shallot, chopped
• 2 tbsp neutral oil, divided
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• White pepper
• 1/4 cup Thai basil leaves, julienned
• 1/4 cup fried shallots
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce, thinned with 2 tbsp water

Beat eggs with white pepper and dark soy sauce. Gather remaining ingredients and have ready. In large non-stick pan over medium heat, briefly saute half of the garlic scapes and shallot to remove raw flavor. Add half of the sliced snow peas and toss for about a minute. Add half of the Shaoxing wine and cook until evaporated. Add half of the sausage and cook an additional 30 seconds.

Add half of the egg, swirling pan lightly to spread out fully. No need to fold this, just let it cook in a single layer on and around the filling, as in the picture below.

Slide onto a plate and garnish with half of the basil, half of the shallots, and a drizzle of the thinned oyster sauce. Repeat all steps above for second omelet.  

Beef and Bok Choy Over Crispy Air-Fried Noodles

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When I was growing up, there was a Chinese restaurant near me that served a few different stir-fries served in a "bird's nest". Although actual birds' nests are a thing, this is not what they served - it was shredded potatoes shaped into a bowl and then deep fried, usually served with a mix of seafood and vegetables in a rich, light colored but very garlic-heavy sauce. The dish has a lot in common with some versions of chow mein, which in some preparations is a bed of really crispy noodles with a very heavily sauced stir-fry plated over the top. Both are great, and the consistency is what really wins me over - crispy on the edges, but chewy and loaded with flavor as you work your way in, and as the noodles start soaking up the sauce from the outside in.

To try to replicate this, I bought a nest-frying tool, which is a strange contraption of two concentric hemispherical baskets that clamp together, and you load up the volume in between with potato and then deep fry the whole thing. Naturally, I've never used it. Instead, I've tried to make the noodle version of this dish a few times with minimal success, mostly because the crispy noodle cakes that serve as the foundation usually come out both squishy and burnt when trying to get heat into the center of a cake of pre-boiled noodles. On a recent attempt, after having a fit about ruining too many noodles, I gave up in a fit of rage and threw a small quantity of the noodles into my air fryer, which turned out to be the magic step - this turned a disaster of a process into a really easy one. And then today, based on a recent attempt at making a few Thai noodle soups from Serious Eats, I borrowed a technique where you make a garlic-infused oil and then use that as the oil to coat the noodles in, prior to air-frying. The result was better than any version I've had in a restaurant.

The toppings for this crispy noodle cake almost don't matter as long as there's enough of a decent, garlicky sauce to work its way into them at serving time. I tend to lean towards a beef with oyster sauce, so I liked the version that combines beef and bok choy from Omnivore's Cookbook, adapted to what was in the garden, and using some leftover rare rib roast and only lightly stir-fried. It's infinitely adaptable, so long as there's at least a cup of a thickened sauce to go over the noodles. If you get the timing just right, serving over the hot, freshly fried noodles will get them to sizzle audibly, and start soaking up that goodness right before you start eating.

A word on ingredients - use decent stuff. There's a good amount of oyster sauce in this, and Shaoxing wine is used in a couple of steps. Try to get a good quality version of these two things, which both make a difference. Try to find an oyster sauce that's actually got "oyster" as the first ingredient, and look for a wine that's got less salt and might be labeled "hua diao" or has aged a bit. This is going to change the flavor immensely, and took me a long time and many mediocre stir-fries to realize.

These are the versions of the key ingredients that I keep on hand. And yes, that's Japanese soy sauce, not Chinese.

Ham Perloo (Purlow)

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Easter has come and gone. And with that comes the true joy of the season - ridiculously cheap hams. I don't even like ham as a meal, but I somehow like ham if it's *in* something. This dish definitely scratches that itch, so every year we run out and grab a ham, to make this and some split pea soup.

This dish that seems to be common in the south, and has about ten names - pilau, perloo, pirloo, purlow, pilaf, plov - so I'm not going to bother guessing at the right spelling of this. The other fun thing is that recipes online range from incredibly bland (cook some rice in what's basically ham water) to incredibly complicated (something resembling jambalaya). The closest I found to something reasonable was one of Emeril Lagasse's recipes, but it needed a bit of tweaking to squeeze out a bit more flavor and cook things in the right order. The recipe below is therefore modified a bit from his website with a few extra ingredients and steps.

This ham purlow dish is far from fancy, but it is definitely memorable. I recommend it if you have leftover ham or want a more mild version of jambalaya.